Some people thought that Max Payne was one of the worst things to come out for cinema. Others thought the film was incredible. Then there were the people that thought the film was adequate and nothing more.
Max Payne is based off the video game. It takes the gritty, melancholy, vicodin-laced attitude of the game and adapts it in a way that would make newer audiences more interested in giving the game a shot. One of the people who worked on Max Payne the game said that the movie ruined the game by changing some integral parts of the story.
Honestly, save for the story, Max Payne was an average game. The film actually changed it into a better product, though the film itself was not without its flaws. It takes the near-suicidal, pain-killer-induced rage of the character Max Payne and tries to make it just as edgy without the drugs, making it an obsessive search for answers and revenge. In all frankness, the change works, but it could’ve been presented in a better way.
They try to make one of the big villains, Jack Lupino, a sociopath because he’s been taking the Valkyr drug. They might have thought that would work as being more edgy, but it really wasn’t. I mean really, which is more edgy: A person turned sociopath because of a drug or a person who was a sadistic sociopath before taking the drug and the drug just makes him more sadistic?
The next flaw with the film: It took the stereotype that only one-in-12 bad guys actually knows how to shoot ,while the other 11 follow a pray-and-spray mentality when shooting at a target (unload the clip and hope to God at least one bullet hits). This doesn’t really work since quite a few of the bad guys are military trained and are on a drug that makes them more effective, and brutal soldiers would know how to shoot.
The weather inconsistency is a complete SNAFU. The story takes place over a week and goes through spring, winter and summer. New York’s weather is a lot more consistent than the game would have you believe since it mimics Chicago weather quite nicely.
The biggest flaw is the fact that some of the camera work ends up being distracting because it’s trying to do cool, artsy shots for the sake of doing cool, artsy shots. An example is one of the shots that was used for the preview where they do a close-up shot that does a slow-motion circling around the top of a handgun and slowly pulling backing while Payne is firing once at a target. They could’ve had the same effect with an easier shot. They have to think shot economy. Sometimes less is actually more.
The soundtrack for Max Payne, as a franchise, can be explained as manic-depressive. The game soundtrack is melancholy, gritty, overbearing and works as your standard film noir soundtrack. The soundtrack for the movie is a lot more upbeat, coming across almost like a Matrix clone, but also a lot angrier.
Max Payne is just an adequate movie. It’s not good or bad. It just is something that can be a fun thing to watch. In terms of quality though, this is one of the best game-based movies released. That might not be saying a lot for game-based movies, but still, that’s the way it is.